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By Rev. A. Powell Davies D.D.
January 12, 1947
When the Normans crossed the
English Channel in the eleventh century they took with them to
England their own language, which, in the course of time was blended
with the native Anglo-Saxon, producing what we now know as the
English tongue. One of the words added in that way to our vocabulary
is the word with which we are concerned this morning, the word
conscience. We do not pronounce it as the Normans did but the
spelling remains the same. It comes from the Latin, of course, (conscientia)
and means "with knowledge," or "awareness" and especially "inner
awareness."
In bringing this new word to the English language, did the Normans
also bring a new idea? We would be mistaken if we thought so. Long
before the Norman Conquest, the Anglo-Saxon people, like all other
people, had experienced inner awareness and had used a word of their
own to denote it. It is an interesting word, "inwit." "Wit" in the
sense of knowledge or awareness, which is, of course, always the old
sense of the word, and the prefix "in" to show that the awareness
was "inner" or psychological, rather then anything that came through
the senses. As a matter of fact, there is probably not a language on
earth, certainly not a well developed language, in which there is no
word for conscience. The experience of this inner awareness must
therefore be virtually universal.
What kind of awareness is it? What is it of which we become aware?
To begin with what we are most sure of, we can say that we are aware
of emotional disturbance when we think of things we have done ill or
of emotional satisfaction when we think of things we have done well.
We have the same emotional reactions to things we are considering
doing. We call some things "right" ==the ones which bring a feeling
of satisfaction; and other things "wrong"--the ones which cause us
to feel disturbed. These feelings are not always uncomplicated;
sometimes they are rather confused. Yet, they exist and in one way
or another everybody seems to experience them.
Ancient people found this very puzzling. How is it, they asked, that
we feel this difference between good and evil? Why do we call some
things good and others evil? Why do we feel so strongly this inner
disturbance or inner satisfaction? They thought about it a great
deal and some of them evolved what we now call myths and legends to
explain their experience. Of such myths and legends there exist many
hundreds but the most familiar, so far as we are concerned, is found
in the Old Testament.
In the beginning, the Book of Genesis tells us, there were just two
people, a man and a woman, and they had no experience of conscience
but lived in ignorance of right and wrong. Consequently, they were
very happy and dwelt in a beautiful garden. But in this garden,
unfortunately, was an ill-omened tree and the name of it was "The
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil." It was extremely important that
the two people--Adam, the man, and Eve, the woman--should never
taste its fruit. In the cool of the evening when God walked in the
garden to refresh himself after the heat of the day, he would tell
Adam and Eve to be sure to leave that particular tree alone; all the
other trees they could do as they pleased about, but this one must
never be touched.
They were deeply impressed but after God had gone back to heaven,
the woman used to look up into the sky and think and think and
think. This tree worried her. Perhaps she talked to the man about
her curiosity and perhaps she didn't. The story doesn't say. But
anyway, sooner or later, she found herself wandering about in the
general direction of the tree; it was astonishing how often she
unintentionally chanced upon it, accidentally getting a little
nearer to it every day. Finally, she got near enough to notice a
serpent coiled about its roots; not an unpleasant serpent, no, a
very agreeable serpent with an interesting line of conversation. Eve
was fascinated; she stood a little way off but she listened. Not
having eaten of the tree as yet, she didn't know that she ought to
go away. "Don't be silly!" the serpent said. "God is treating you as
though you were a child; he wants to keep you childish all your
life. Grow up! Eat this fruit! It will give you knowledge, the same
kind of knowledge God himself has, the knowledge of good and evil.
Try some! Give some to that doltish man of yours....What's he so
timid about, anyway? Is he a man or a mouse? Or are you, too,
afraid? Poor Eve! Poor simple, silly Eve. Why she's just a
frightened little baby!"
"Who's a baby?" Eve demanded. (The story doesn't say so, but we know
it must have been like that.) "Who's afraid? Give me some of that
fruit!" And so she ate it. And having someone else to blame it on,
which was just what he had been waiting for all along, Adam ate some
too. He certainly wasn't going to be outdone in enterprise by a mere
woman, especially as he was probably jealous of the serpent. If we
may judge from the story, the effect was immediate. As soon as God
appeared in the garden, they both wanted to hide. The inner
awareness made them afraid. The knowledge of good and evil had
arrived with a vengeance. Conscience had come to earth.
Now this old story, suitably interpreted, could have a certain
amount of meaning, even today. Folklore should never be regarded
superficially: the people who developed it did so out of a great
deal of experience, and they were not without wisdom. Furthermore,
they knew how to tread softly when they came to the threshold of
mysteries and what they knew and could not express they hid as an
open secret in the fabulous stories they wove. In some ways, we are
wiser than they were, but in other ways, not so wise. However that
may be, we must leave the folklore explanations and ask how the
problem of conscience was dealt with as time passed on.
When men began to have words in which to describe experience more
exactly, they spoke of a conflict of good and evil everywhere, one
instance of which was the warfare in every individual soul.
Sometimes they adopted the idea of a God and a devil engaged in a
mortal struggle. Wrong was what the devil tempted men to think or
say or do, in the interests of his own evil purpose of rebellion
against God; right was the law of God. Conscience was the agency
implanted by God in every soul to warn men of the devil's temptings
and to make them anxious and unhappy when they sinned.
Upon this, in one way or another, a great deal of doctrine has been
built up, most of which is no longer persuasive to a modern mind.
Yet we cannot deny the actual experience: that we continue to have
an inner awareness of right and wrong. It is not uniform from person
to person; it is not the same from age to age; it is not always
entirely clear or definite, but nonetheless, it is there. We would
like to know what it is.
Now, to this problem, the greatest of modern psychologists, Sigmund
Freud, has diligently attempted a scientific approach. He does not
begin with doctrines or with theories, or with generalities of any
sort. He begins with clinical experience. Individuals come to him to
be cured, if possible, of various psychological ailments and
abnormalities. In many cases, these people were inhibited, prevented
by something obstructive within themselves from living normal lives.
They could not think or speak or act as ordinary people did, because
of unresolved conflicts buried below the surface of their minds.
What caused the repression, Freud asked? What forced the conflict
out of sight? What were the elements that conflicted? And the answer
he gave to these questions involves, of course, more explanation
than we can put into a few sentences this morning. But we shall not
be wrong if we say that one of the discoveries Freud made was that
inner conflict and the repression of the conflict both resulted from
the reality of conscience. Many patients had badly educated
consciences, perhaps because of psychological injury or harmful
conditioning, and Freud, as part of the treatment, would try to
reeducate the abnormal conscience, making it act more as it does in
ordinary people's lives. This is not a clinical or technical
description of what Freud tried to do, but so far as we can put it
into ordinary language, it sufficiently reports the facts.
Freud, then, was up against conscience as a factor in psychological
problems. Undeniably, there was such a thing: it could be a very
obstinate thing, it could prevent a cure, for even a diseased
conscience is a powerful influence, more powerful at times than a
healthy one. But where did this conscience come from? Freud did not
believe in God, he did not really believe in any religion he knew
about, at all. The universe, he said, is neutral; there is no
evidence that it contains spiritual realities such as religions try
to describe. Conscience, therefore, could not be the voice of God.
As a scientist, Freud had no patience with such an idea. Clinically
speaking, the voice of God was not audible. Therefore, all the
ancient beliefs should be discarded.
But this still left him with the necessity of accounting for
conscience. Not only neurotics, but healthy people, too, had this
inner awareness of right and wrong. Freud himself had it. It
prevented him from making his life a good deal easier by
soft-pedaling some of his beliefs. Where did it come from, he asked?
And he began to look for his answer in the study of primitive
religion. Immediately he discovered the phenomenon called "tabu,"
concerning which there is a tremendous literature. And no serious
scholar would deny that he was on the right track. Prehistoric man,
he reminded us, did not understand the true causes of what brought
him harm. He did not know, for example, that dead bodies could cause
disease from physical causes. All he knew was that harm came if he
had anything but the most guarded and careful contact with a body
that was dead. And so dead bodies became tabu. They could only be
dealt with according to precise rituals. We would call it hygiene
but primitive man thought it was all a matter of gods and demons, of
goblins and ghosts. These entities must not be offended, and if the
slightest mistake was made, the penalty might be very painful. The
same idea extended to everything that was dangerous--and for
primitive man, this included so much that we might almost say that
it included everything whatever. So that he surrounded his life with
prohibitions. There were tabus of death, tabus of birth, tabus of
marriage, tabus of war, tabus of blood-relationship, tabus of
worship, tabus of holy or forbidden places, tabus of royal
persons--hundreds and hundreds of tabus, and sometimes when the
original cause which produced the tabu had been left behind due to
intellectual progress, the tabu itself remained.
An illustration of this may be seen in the state of bad conscience
people sometimes experience if they use blasphemy. At one time, all
names were tabu, but especially the names of kings, priests and
gods. This was because names were supposed to be a powerful means of
working magic, by casting spells and in practicing the arts of
witchcraft. If the name of a god were used, the god might take a
terrible vengeance. Very few enlightened persons believe that such a
vengeance is probable, today: it would be an unscientific belief.
Yet they may feel uncomfortable in the presence of blasphemy. And we
might mention that quite apart from blasphemy, orthodox Jews, from
Old Testament days onward have studiously avoided the use--even the
liturgical use--of the Hebrew name for God. They say, "the Lord,"
instead.
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